The inventive concept relates to a waterproof packing for a mobile terminal and a mobile terminal having the same, and more particularly to a waterproof packing for a mobile terminal and a mobile terminal having the same, which has an efficient structure for preventing water from infiltrating into a terminal main body without extensively changing a structure.
A mobile terminal is a terminal that can be freely used while moving anywhere, and representatively includes a mobile communication terminal such as a cellular phone, and personal digital assistant (PDA) called a personal portable terminal, etc.
Therefore, a term of ‘the mobile terminal’ used herein refers to all of them, but the following descriptions are limited to the PDA for the convenience.
In complicated and diverse society, individuals have needed to keep or maintain his/her own information, and various products have been released in the market in order to meet such individual needs. One of them is the PDA.
The PDA is also called a pocket computer, which is a general term for a palm-sized small device having functions of calculation, information storage and search for personal or business use. Occasionally, the PDA is mainly used for keeping schedule calendar, address book information, etc.
In particular, a personal portable terminal (PDA) for industrial use has been widely spread for physical distribution industry, and its market has been gradually expanded.
The industrial PDA has various functions such as a barcode scanner, a card payment device, etc. that are not given to a general PDA, and is advantageously efficient to perform delivery, data management, related business, etc.
For example, in the case of an insurance company, an insurance planner may use an industrial PDA to directly process customer information management, customer searching, scheduling, consultation diary management, anniversary searching, fund statement processing, and the like various insurance-related business on the site. In the case of a hospital, a medical team may use a portable industrial PDA to input or search an X-ray image or the like image and graphic data as well as a patient's medical record and history and prescription anytime and anywhere. Also, in the case of the police, a traffic or anticrime policeman may use a industrial PDA to do a outdoor crackdown, and it is thus possible to remarkably shorten time in the outdoor crackdown since a traffic fine, which is currently payable two or three days later after the crackdown, can be directly paid to banking facilities.
As we know from the foregoing description that the industrial PDA has been used in various industrial fields, the industrial PDA has to meet requirements higher than a certain level to withstand not general environments but industrial environments on the contrary to the general PDA.
That is, it is easy to figure out that the industrial PDA may be used in a cold storage at ten degrees below zero or used for a long time in the open air on the contrary to the general PDA. Also, a postman or the like user may ride roughshod over the industrial PDA on business. Therefore, the industrial PDA is competitive as a product when it has shock resistance, waterproofing, heat/cold resistance, etc. to some extent.
Like this, the industrial PDA has to not only be more sturdily made than the general PDA but also necessarily have a waterproof function to be proof against snow or rain. Therefore, the industrial PDA is significantly larger than the general PDA because it is designed to satisfy the requirements such as shock resistance, waterproofing, heat/cold resistance, etc. higher than a certain level and involve the barcode scanner or the like as described above. Accordingly, it is inconvenient for Asians, who have smaller hands than Westerners, to grab the industrial PDA, and there is a need of reducing the size of the industrial PDA.
Meanwhile, there is an example that a conventional mobile terminal employs a rubber packing having a simple annular shape for the waterproof function.
Such a rubber packing is mostly shaped like a ring having a circular cross-section, and generally arranged in between a terminal main body and a terminal rear cover module to prevent water from infiltrating into a terminal exposing area in the terminal main body.
In practice, when the battery is separated, terminals to electrically contact the battery are exposed so that a subscriber identification module (SIM) card or the like can be inserted in a back area of the terminal main body. If water infiltrates into the terminal exposure area, malfunctions may arise. Therefore, this area has to necessarily have the waterproof structure.
However, in the case of the conventional mobile terminal that has been on the market or will be released is vulnerable to water due to its structural limit, and thus water is likely to infiltrate into the inside of the terminal main body.
Nevertheless, it is not preferable in terms of the structure and costs if the waterproof function is given by extensively changing the structure of the mobile terminal. Accordingly, the mobile terminal has to be efficiently made up for the waterproof structure.